Beyond the Time Barrier

Starring: Robert Clarke, Darlene Tompkins, Vladimir Sokoloff, Boyd "Red" Morgan
Directed by: Edgar G. Ulmer
Rating: Not rated
Genre: Science Fiction
1960

Times Seen:
Tim: 1

Summary: In 1960, a test pilot (Robert Clarke) travels into outer space before returning to Earth. He is shocked to discover his craft slipped the time barrier, and it's now 65 years after he left.

Review:

Tim: Beyond the Time Barrier is a hastily made, lackluster 60s science fiction film. The movie had a very small budget, and it shows. While the story had some interesting ideas, ultimately, this is a film that has far too much working against it. I did not enjoy this film and it's actually pretty bad all around. This poorly made film really should be avoided.

I'm really surprised at how little the budget was for this film. Director Edgar G. Ulmer was known for working with small budgets and quickly producing films. I wish he had taken more time to shoot this film, and I wish they had more resources to work with. This whole effort seems like a rushed, muddled mess. While Ulmer is ultimately responsible for the poor quality of this film, he obviously had some challenges with the amount of resources available to him. Here's a couple of examples. The film mixes footage shot for the film with stock footage from other films. It's occasionally laughable how obvious the stock footage is, and how disjointed it feels with the rest of the film. Another example involves the mutants, who are all wearing incredibly obvious bald caps. It's almost as if no one even bothered to try and hide this fact. The costumes and makeup here were occasionally quite atrocious, and it destroys any sense of magic or believability we might have had (but probably didn't anyway).

The science in the film is beyond laughable at this point, but was pretty weak even for 1960. There's some mumbo jumbo about the pilot entering outer space, and based on his trajectory and speed, he was able to slip past the time barrier. So for him, the flight took several minutes, but for Earth, 65 years had passed. There's maybe a slight hint of truth buried in this (Einstein did predict that time passes differently for people traveling near the speed of light), but it's so far from the "science" in this film that it's humorous. While this is completely unrealistic, it was presented in such a serious way that I was almost able to suspend my disbelief for the duration of the film. Unfortunately, it gets even worse. To travel back in time, all he has to do is fly the same trajectory and speed in the opposite direction. How in the world this would even be calculated is beyond me. Plus, there's so many factors at play here that would be uncontrollable and unknowable. It was absurd that the solution ultimately boiled down to "turn around and fly back the same way". There's a final twist at the end, which was meant to shock, but just felt so forced and defied all logic that it ruined the ending for me (in truth, the movie had already been ruined).

I did like the ambition of this film. Time travel movies are notoriously tricky, and this film had some interesting ideas about time, space, and the future of the human race. It was slightly fun to explore that through this film. The basic intent was strong, it was simply that the execution was horribly lacking.

Beyond the Time Barrier could have been better with a much larger budget, a series of script rewrites, and a director who wasn't rushing forward to finish the film (I believe the film took 10 days to film, and that shows). Plus, the acting in this film is quite atrocious. I won't even mention any of the cast members because they were so bad. This is a film I did not like, did not enjoy, and would never watch again. There's a lot of bad movies out there, and unfortunately, this is one of them.

Rating 1-10
Tim's Rating: 3.5



If You Enjoyed This Movie, We Recommend: The Man From Planet X, The Time Machine